Wednesday, June 07, 2006

My dog is driving me nuts this morning so I'm not going to put up a long post. Just a few responses that I thought other folks might get some value out of as well. Feel free to have at it with your own free advice in the comments section...

I have a question for you. How can I find individuals with shorts that the may want produced?

Anyone who writes or wants to direct has a short or an idea for a short. If you want to produce one, first decide exactly what you mean by that -- do you plan to fund it? Is your idea to take someone else's money and manage it? Do you want to do a no-budget short to test your nerve and problem solving skills? Once you know this, then put an ad out on craigslist and your local film school/college, make the rounds of community theater groups and talk to folks who are involved in filmmaking in your area. You ought to scare up way more submissions than you ever thought you'd find. Then you figure out what your criteria are for the type of filmmaker you want to work with, what your agenda is with the short film (e.g. to gain experience, to go film festivals, as a platform to convince financiers you can handle a project, to meet new filmmakers, etc.) and where you can sign up for some meditation classes so you don't go crazy before you finish the film.

I was wondering if you could explain what made your friend's short film and his screenplay so good. What about his work piqued the interest of managers and agents? How did it stand out from the plethora of shorts and scripts floating around?

OK, this actually probably merits a long post, but I don't have time -- my dog is howling at the front door as I type this. Jerk. Anyway, the long and short of this answer is that the work shows that the filmmaker is in tune with the internal emotional motivators of his characters, is able to express that in the writing, and the visuals tell the emotional story. He's also an excellent musician, so the music in the short film was way above average which helped.